After getting off to quite the rocky start to his debut season as the Washington Wizards head coach, Scott Brooks has turned this once disappointing campaign around. Washington has begun to consistently tear their competition to shreds, going 22-6 over their past 28 games, a mark only the Golden State Warriors have matched over that span. Brooks took the play of their stellar backcourt comprising of John Wall and Bradley Beal to another level and they are currently gunning for that prized two seed in the Eastern Conference with a record of 38-24, only one game behind the Boston Celtics.
With the season beginning to dwindle down and new talent being added recently in guards Bojan Bogdanovic and Brandon Jennings, the Wizards are locked and loaded to make some serious noise come the postseason.
Out of their two new bench pieces, Bogdanovic has been the one to find his footing first, averaging 22.3 points per game over the span of four contests thus far in March. On the other end of the spectrum, the usually explosive Brandon Jennings has only scored four points since he began donning the Wizards uniform. The expectation for Jennings when he was picked up off waivers was for him to run the show whenever John Wall needed a rest, and though he did have one game in which he dished out seven assists, the 27-year old has been tentative in his short Wizards career, only putting up nine total shots in four outings.
Though Jennings recently had a night cut short due to an ejection against the Phoenix Suns, the crafty floor general needs to get more aggressive, something Coach Brooks has been urging him to do. Following from Chase Hughes of CSN MidAtlantic:
“Coach told me today during a timeout, ‘when are you going to start shooting the ball?’ I said ‘I would if my hands weren’t so slippery.’ Every time I catch it, I feel like I don’t want to airball it. He was like ‘alright, well next game shoot the ball.'”
With Jennings formerly being known as a volume shooter and scorer, he went on to acknowledge that while hearing something like this out of your coach is a rarity, it’s good to know the coach has your back and believes in your abilities.
“I think this is the first coach to ever tell me to shoot more. Honestly. When I first came into the league, shooting wasn’t really that popular where guys didn’t really like point guards to shoot that much. Now it’s like ‘shoot the ball.’ I’ve gotta get back to that,” he said…
“It is refreshing. That actually gave me a confidence boost. He’s encouraging me to shoot and he wants me to be aggressive,” Jennings said.
Brandon Jennings has never been shy about letting it fly, typically showing utmost confidence in his stroke and ability to get to the rack. After being drafted 10th overall by the Milwaukee Bucks in 2010, Jennings showed promise of being a consistent scorer in this league putting up good numbers and even pushing 20 points per night in his third year as a pro, putting up impressive averages of 19.1 points per game and 5.5 assists.
Hearing that Jennings has the green light and the approval of his coach to be more aggressive should do wonders not only for his confidence, but to this Washington second unit that has all of a sudden began to show some life at the perfect time.
